As most of you know by now, I suffered a house fire back in October of last year.  It wasn’t so much the fire that did most of the damage as it was the smoke that got to everything I own.  Yes that means all of my hunting gear!  Fortunately one of our Up North Journal Sponsors came to the rescue!  It wasn’t long after the fire that I got a call from Dead Down Wind when they heard what had happened, with that call came information and Dead Down Wind laundry detergent.  What you will find in this article is the process that I went through to clean my favorite hunting clothing.

With a house fire the clothing that can be saved (cleaned) is taken to a company that will treat the clothing and clean it.  They use chemicals to treat the clothing along with other processes to remove the smoke smell from the garments.  Well I had several pieces of hunting clothes that I did not want chemicals used on them not to mention I was at the beginning of hunting season and would need them soon.  So I kept them to clean myself and this is where Dead Down Wind came to the rescue.

The clothes that received the most smoke damage were pieces not in a closed airtight container.  Those that were in my Scent-Lok Bags had no noticeable smell to them and I washed them separately from the heavily smoked hunting clothing.

I took two capfuls of Dead Down Wind laundry detergent (they said only one was needed, I tend to overkill things) and put it in the washing machine and started a soak cycle.  I was instructed by the good people at DDW to let the clothes presoak for 20 minutes before washing.  I then ran them through a normal wash cycle.  All of my clothing came out scent free after one washing except for one coat.  I ran it through a second wash cycle and it came out scent free.  After cleaning all of my hunting clothes that I kept from the cleaners, I put them all in a plastic bag and sealed them up.  It has been two months since I washed them so it was time to sniff test the clothing in the bags.    Just as I had hoped they passed the sniff test!  Now keep in mind that I received a some regular clothing back from the cleaners that still smelled like smoke when they returned them to us!  Thank You Dead Down Wind for helping to save some of my hunting gear!  It’s now time to take the regular clothes that came back still smelling smoky and run them through a DDW bath to clean them!

So if you have some really smelly hunting gear, get yourself some DDW laundry detergent and presoak for 20 minutes with a capful of detergent and then wash normally and your good to go!